Will this work?

[Jokah]

I currently own a 3-way SLI/Crossfirex capable board (LGA1366) with a GTX 570 TFIII installed.

I want to keep the 570 for gaming and install 2 5870's purely for mining. Is this possible?

I was going to install the 5870's and the most current driver as well as install the relavant SDK package. Then I thought as long as I have a dummy connector in each card I should hopefully be good to go?

I'm currently, succesfully, using GUIminer with my 570 (I know its not ideal but I wanted to get everything setup and working before I bought more hardware to mine with). GUIminer has the option to select different GPU's so as far as I understand as long as I do what I have stated above I should be able to run each 5870 as a seperate miner and use my 570 seperately for gaming. I probably game and mine at the same. My PSU might not be able to manage everything at full load all at once.

Does all this sound correct or am I missing something?

Current system specs:

i7 920
Asus P6X58D premium
MSI GTX 570 Twin frozr III
6GB corsair Dominator 1600MHz
1000w coolermaster PSU
Cooler master HAF 932 case
Crucial 128GB SSD

If all goes well I may eventually replace the 570 with a 6970 or a 6990 to get more mining on the go but for now I can get two 5870's relatively cheap and would like to keep the 570.

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[FooDSt4mP]

It should work in Windows, and is probably possible in linux, but a pain in the ass.  What OS are you using?  As for power, I'd think 1 KW would be plenty.  Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got a box with an i7 and 2 5870s with only 750 W.  It's pretty much a dedicated rig though, so there isn't a whole lot of CPU usage.

[Jokah]

I'm more than confident that 1000w is enough.

Can't believe I forgot to put down what OS I am using. I'm on windows 7.

I have looked into this alot further since posting and it seems with this board, and windows 7, mining like this should be no problem at all as long as I use a dummy VGA connector in the cards I am mining with. I think there may be ways to do it without a dummy connector but for now the most reliable way seems to be using one.

Since posting I have purchased a sandy bridge system but as far as I am aware everything should still work fine. The only problem I forsee is with the new board I have and its PCIe lanes.

Its an Asus z68 pro and has 1x PCIe x16, 1x PCIe x8 and 1x PCIe x4 (I think this is tied to the USB 3.0 and something else but they are not something I will be using). I'm a little worried about A) If the card will work in the PCIe x4 slot and B) if it does work, how will this effect the performance for mining. From what I read difference for mining would negligable but I haven't really found any solid proof.